5min – Veganisim

11Aug

I got into a conversation the other day on YouTube about veganism. My original point had been about coffee: If I, a coffee drinker, sit next to someone in a restaurant that finds coffee offensive, should I apologize for liking coffee? Or should that person just deal with the fact that other people like thing that they don’t and the world is not a safe space?

A few people said coffee wasn’t that great an example, how can anyone be offended by coffee. But I’ve met them. They are out there. My ex MIL tried convincing me to switch to tea, and while I do like tea it does not do it for me. Have to have my coffee.

So I decided I’d add veganism to the argument. If I want to eat a cheese burger at a restaurant should I apologize to the vegan next to me because they are offended? Is it okay for them to call me a murderer? And of course I got a lot of responses from vegans about how much better veganism is, and how I should try it.

I did try it. In fact as of now we have a freezer with a little hamburger, and a lot of chicken in it. But mostly burritos. And that freezer of meat will last us a few months because we don’t eat meat very often. We don’t have steak anymore, and pork has been off the menu for years unless we get it at a restaurant occasionally. Mostly I subsist off eggs. I eat tons of eggs. Eggs are the best thing in life because if I have an egg every morning I don’t feel sick later that morning.

And that’s the problem I had with veganism. It made me feel sick. I often got the shakes, felt weak and tired, couldn’t concentrate. My mind would wander more then usual, and I even started having some blurry vision. As soon as I started eating meat again I was fine.

And I tried it all. I tried tofu, eating all the nuts, lots of peanut butter because I LOVE peanut butter. I tried fake meats, and beans. I tried everything. Nothing helped as much as having an egg, or a piece of chicken, in the morning.

Things are a bit more complicated for me because I can’t have much rice or pasta since I’m also pre-diabetic and I’m trying to not go full diabetic. Eating only veggies and some meat with the occasional pasta dish is what’s working for me to be healthy.

But I’m still a murderer according to some vegans. My health isn’t important. I was doing it wrong. What about the animals?

It’s just another instance of “my beliefs are better than yours, and if you disagree then you are worse then Hitler.” I respect vegans for following their beliefs, and I wish them well. But I do wish respect went both ways.

4 responses to “5min – Veganisim”

Reducing meat consumption has the potential to reap benefits, both for the individual and the human race as a whole. However – leaving aside the people such as yourself who have difficulty getting enough of certain nutrients without eating animal products – the environmental footprint of pulses and other animal replacements suggests that everyone going vegan wouldn’t be sustainable.

I’ve also seen studies that suggest certain animals (most cows for example) only exist because we farm them: if we converted farms to entirely vegetable production, the combination of lost habitat and lack of support would decimate the food animal population. So, veganism isn’t necessarily good for animals.

Of course, these issues are partly due to the size of the human population: if we drastically reduced the numbers of the human race we could potentially sustain a mostly vegan diet. However, that takes us into the territory of a whole other argument about murder: abortions.

Yep. Drastically reducing population would be the best thing. But it doesn’t have to be through abortions. Studies show that places that have access to birth control, and family planning services, and sex ed, drastically reduce problems with teen pregnancy and high birthrate. Hell, just EDUCATING women, giving them opportunities outside the home, and chances to be more than house wives drastically reduces the birthrate. Abortion doesn’t have to be a key stone on the reduction of population, though I do agree that it should be an option for extreme cases, and that the morning after pill should always be available. But I wish sex ed and birth prevention was the main focus instead of “abortion advocacy”.

And what you said about vegetarianism, also true. It isn’t sustainable because you have to eat more plants then animals to keep alive. And if we just killed all the meat animals to grow crops that still wouldn’t fix it. All very true.

Didn’t mean population control required abortion: I meant wider discussion of population control tends to end up involving discussion of abortion policies. I was aiming not to put a half-hour essay on your 5 minute post, but trimmed my point a little much.